You Can Afford Fresh Flowers

In honor of Kitchen Month, I have been thinking about the kitchen table as a nourishing altar to our meals and remembering a comment posted last week by someone who felt they could not afford to keep fresh flowers in their house. In response, a few readers made some great suggestions:

Faith suggested buying Mums or Alstroemerias - both last well over a week if you change the water now and then, and both are available year-round at most flower shops and even corner delis.

Lisa said "you can make a cheap grocery store assorted bouquet look special by separating out the different components into separate, small vases, or better yet, juice glasses or jars or the like. Line them up, ordered by texture, color, height, whatever suits."

That's a great idea, and reminds me of one of my favoite tricks with cheap deli bouquets:

Most corner delis that sell flowers have mums for about $3 a bunch. Simply stripping off the paper wrapping and putting them in a vase makes them look, well, like a $3 bunch of mums from the corner deli.

I like to snip off each stem where it joins the main stem, getting up to forty 3"-8" stems. Then I arrange them with the tallest in the middle, circling out, into a tight little bouquet. Sometimes there are enough to make two - one for the kitchen table and one for the bathroom, or bedside. Tie a little ribbon around the bouquet and you have something even more sweet. (See photo above.) I keep a collection of ribbons from Kate's Paperie for this purpose.

Three dollars a week is something I think most of us can afford. Having fresh flowers on your table is one of the best ways to honor you table for what it is: an altar to your place of nourishment. SKGR